BOUNDARIES - Walls

Boundary walls within Bishop Burton range in style and age. Perhaps the most prominent wall is that around the former grounds of Bishop Burton Hall (High Hall). This wall is largely stone and may be of some antiquity. Fragments of related walling can also be found in various other parts of the Green. This wall was ‘gentrified’ with brick dressing and posts in the 1880’s and this modified wall can be seen adjacent to the college lodge house that was built around the same time.

Other walls are brick or stone and brick mix. Copings are often simple, sometimes using roof tiles (see image right where Edwardian roof tiles have been used to top the wall near the lodge building). Sometimes walls are lower or accommodate a change in level between garden and road (such as at Cherry Tree Cottage). The vast majority of boundaries to more modern houses are rails or hedges.

Although there is no single dominant boundary treatment within Bishop Burton the softness provided by the verges and hedges create a soft, naturalistic environment that enhances the village and the Conservation Area. Many of these hedges are however relatively late and although historic hedging remains, not least as a legacy of the enclosed country lanes, many hedges that we see today are the product of later suburban housing. These houses have their origins in the Arts and Crafts Movement, that itself harked after a rural idyll, and originated in the garden villages of the early 20th century.

Hedging should be retained wherever possible and new development should consider hedges as part of any new boundary planting.

BOUNDARIES - Fences and Railings

Although walls and hedges tend to dominate the boundaries of properties there are elements of railings or fences. Although consistency and palette is varied the overall aesthetic is one of rural character. Such boundaries echo formal estate rails to picket fences and agricultural fences. The estate railing is generally seen in front of some of the 1950’s Council houses that face onto Pudding Gate.